Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Discuss hardware-related topics, such as development cartridges, CopyNES, PowerPak, EPROMs, or whatever.

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
mikejmoffitt
Posts: 1353
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:43 pm

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by mikejmoffitt »

tepples wrote:
bird333 wrote:Also using a Powerpak, while scrolling through the games I see a title that should be at the top of the screen at the bottom and vice versa depending on which direction I am scrolling.
Does this also occur on an original NES and a TV that has been adjusted to underscan? Because of NES video memory limits, many games allow artifacts to remain on the top and bottom 8 pixels of the screen when scrolling, trusting that the bezel of an NTSC TV will cut them off.
That depends on the monitor / television. Some will show a moderate wobble, some jitter by about one pixel's worth, and some show no such strangeness at all.
roadkill908
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2017 8:44 am

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by roadkill908 »

Zonomi wrote:Why is it so hard to get one of these kits ?
Each time game-tech.us get a batch, they are sold so quickly that I can't even buy one.
It is the same problem with Marshallh's N64 HDMI kit.

I know this is a hobbyist project, but there are other projects like Krikzz's that are never out of stock.
They get bought in batches by some modders who can install it for you, and they do very good quality work. Just find a modder who may have a few (or less) kits left and let them install it for you. That's how I got mine, and it was done for a very fair price. His mod work was superb. I would never install it myself because I know I'd fry my NES.
evil_ash_xero wrote:Dude, PLEASE bring back Interpolation. I cannot get this looking right, without it.
If your original version didn't have it, I would never have bought the NES-HDMI.
If you need space, take out some of those god awful HQ scalers.

The new palettes are very good though.
You can just downgrade back to V2.25 to get it back, but you'll lose the new color palettes. I have to admit, I like using the interpolation sometimes too.
Zonomi
Posts: 69
Joined: Wed May 09, 2007 12:45 pm

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by Zonomi »

roadkill908 wrote:They get bought in batches by some modders who can install it for you, and they do very good quality work. Just find a modder who may have a few (or less) kits left and let them install it for you. That's how I got mine, and it was done for a very fair price. His mod work was superb. I would never install it myself because I know I'd fry my NES.
I can mod myself, and I have been doing so on all my consoles for the last 15 years :)
I know it is easier to sell 50+ kits to one guy, than 1 kit to one customer, who can complain that his mod doesn't work. This is not the case with kevtris's mod, as the only reseller I know is game-tech.us, but marshallh doesn't even bother to answer you if you're not a reseller.
User avatar
Nioreh
Posts: 115
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 11:46 am
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by Nioreh »

kevtris wrote:I removed the mostly useless "interpolation" settings.
The interpolation for horizontal non integer scaling? Nooo!!!!
roadkill908
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2017 8:44 am

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by roadkill908 »

Zonomi wrote: I can mod myself, and I have been doing so on all my consoles for the last 15 years :)
Ah ok. Makes sense then. How come you didn't buy a kit when they came out not too long ago? I remember seeing an announcement for new kits being sold recently with V3.01 installed on them. Did they sell out within an hour or something?
Zonomi wrote:marshallh doesn't even bother to answer you if you're not a reseller.
Ah yeah that's true. The UltraHDMI is yet another mod I certainly know that I can't do myself anyway, but I do want to commission someone to install it for me someday. Although I'm not no where near as big a fan of the N64 as I am with the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles so I can definitely wait it out.
Last edited by roadkill908 on Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bird333
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2017 7:20 am

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by bird333 »

tepples wrote:
bird333 wrote:Also using a Powerpak, while scrolling through the games I see a title that should be at the top of the screen at the bottom and vice versa depending on which direction I am scrolling.
Does this also occur on an original NES and a TV that has been adjusted to underscan? Because of NES video memory limits, many games allow artifacts to remain on the top and bottom 8 pixels of the screen when scrolling, trusting that the bezel of an NTSC TV will cut them off.
It is an original NES or do you mean just using a normal cart? If so, I haven't noticed anything using a regular cart. I haven't adjusted my TV to underscan. I wouldn't know how. :)
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by tepples »

I'm trying to narrow down to whether it's a problem with the PowerPak, a problem with the NES (or clone), or just an artifact common among NES scrolling engines.

Put 240p Test Suite on your PowerPak, run the "Overscan" test, and see how far you can push the white borders out so that they're just barely no longer visible.
bird333
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2017 7:20 am

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by bird333 »

tepples wrote:I'm trying to narrow down to whether it's a problem with the PowerPak, a problem with the NES (or clone), or just an artifact common among NES scrolling engines.

Put 240p Test Suite on your PowerPak, run the "Overscan" test, and see how far you can push the white borders out so that they're just barely no longer visible.
I've got 0 overscan on every border.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by tepples »

Some of this is a simplification, intended for someone who's not quite an advanced NES programmer.

"Zero overscan" meaning you can push the top or bottom border out by 1 pixel and see the whiteness? If so, your NES and PowerPak are OK, but you're seeing an artifact of the NES's video memory limit.

The NES PPU's background map is 2 screens wide by 2 screens high. But there's only enough video memory in the Control Deck to configure it as 1 screen wide by 2 screens high ("vertical arrangement") or 2 screens wide by 1 screen high ("horizontal arrangement"). The map is mirrored, or duplicated, into the missing space: a vertical arrangement (1x2) is mirrored horizontally, and a horizontal arrangement (2x1) is mirrored vertically. The cartridge chooses which of these two applies. On a simpler cartridge, a blob of solder on the H or V pad chooses horizontal or vertical arrangement. More sophisticated cartridges can rearrange the map at runtime; this is why Metroid scrolls in four directions without any visible problems.

You may be familiar with the discolored tiles at the right side of Super Mario Bros. 3. This is because the game scrolls horizontally on a cartridge configured for vertical arrangement. (It does this because the game also scrolls vertically and diagonally.) Likewise, if you try to scroll vertically on a cartridge configured for horizontal arrangement, a line of text or graphics will be momentarily split between the top and bottom of the screen. Most NTSC TVs have at least 8 pixels of overscan on top and bottom, which largely hides this artifact. But yours has none, causing the artifact to be visible. In Concentration Room and Haunted: Halloween '85, I tried to accommodate zero-overscan displays by blanking the line that would be split. This is important for the PAL NES, which has 1 line of overscan at the top and none at the bottom.
pikasurf
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2015 2:48 pm

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by pikasurf »

i have a hi-def modded av famicom and games are crashing when i use the fdsstick. i've tried many different combinations of settings. SMB on a famicom cartridge (the only one i have besides the ram adapter) works fine on virtually any settings. could it be the ram adapter?

edit: the ram adapter + fdsstick work on an unmodded original famicom
KP9000
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:21 pm

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by KP9000 »

I'm sitting here with a gutted/disassembled NES ready for a Hi-Def kit to be put in, and I was thinking about the palette file switching this kit is capable of. Would it be possible to assign a color other than black for the colors that are on the far right of the palette? I'm referring to palettes $0D, $1D, $0E, $1E, $2E, $3E, $0F, $1F, $2F, and $3F. I want to expand the NES palette and would love some extra colors to work with. I've supplied emulators with custom palette files before and hacked ROMs to address those palettes and they worked fine. I'm hoping I would be able to do the same thing here. Thoughts?

Edit: From the wiki:
Image
I'm referring to the black ones to the right. I realize many games use $0F for black, so I'll keep it that way. I'll probably hijack $0D instead. My question is now, though, how is the data packaged in the .nes update ROM? How do I go about finding the palettes in the package, and is it safe to edit them?
rouken
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:24 am

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by rouken »

I'm an owner of an AV Famicom, and I'm in love with the idea of modding it to install the Hi-Def NES. The only thing is breaking my heart is the sole idea of cutting the console's shell to make a way for the HDMI port. :cry:

I hope it could have a way to put the Hi-Def NES board in a position to make the HDMI port completely positioned in the same direction of the rear panel without harm the console's internal structure. With this, could be awesomely beautiful to use a custom 3D printed rear panel, like the one Kevtris put in a AV Famicom in THIS VIDEO.

Sadly, it's not possible to install both Hi-Def NES and NESRGB at the same time. It would be perfect to use the same console in a CRT and in modern TVs, achieving the game's max visual quality in both cases.
User avatar
game-tech.us
Formerly akaviolence
Posts: 157
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2009 10:21 am
Location: Central Indiana

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by game-tech.us »

rouken wrote: like the one Kevtris put in a AV Famicom in THIS VIDEO.
That video was me, Jason, not Kevin/Kevtris.

I see this a lot and am unsure why there is so much confusion about who is who... lol
rouken
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:24 am

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by rouken »

game-tech.us wrote:That video was me, Jason, not Kevin/Kevtris.

I see this a lot and am unsure why there is so much confusion about who is who... lol
Sorry about this. My fault... :oops:

But I thought Game-tech.us was a place were Kevtris works... :|
rcdrone
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 11:23 pm

Re: Hi-Def NES HDMI Adapter for the NES

Post by rcdrone »

I dug a bit into the issue that teknix1 & bird333 have brought up about the wavy lines at the top of the screen. Using a capture card and stepping through frames, I can see the pattern is very consistent; the top three* game rows are offset exactly 1 game pixel to the left every other frame. I tested the following games on real carts (where applicable), and they all showed the same behavior.

240p test suite (PowerPak)
The Legend of Zelda (need to clip Link into the HUD)
Mega Man 6
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants
Tetris

Conceptually, this should be easy to correct for if the behavior lines up with the PPU even/odd flag although I don't know if the missing pixels are recoverable. (Caveat: I don't program FPGAs or know much about the NES.) It would be nice if this was addressed.

*The viewport also seems to be shifted down by one game pixel. In other words, the top row has a black line inserted, the next three rows are jittery, and the bottom row is missing except in 1080p 4x mode. It's nice that the bottom row is visible in that mode since it suggests the other modes can be fixed.
Post Reply